Titan’s tides reveal hidden ocean that could host life

A HUGE ocean that could hold more water than all of Earth’s oceans combined is sloshing beneath Titan’s icy crust – and it may harbour life.

Luciano Iess of Sapienza University of Rome in Italy and his team analysed measurements of Titan’s gravity field taken by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft during its six fly-bys of Saturn’s moon between 2006 and 2011. They found that gravitational tugs from Saturn deform Titan in a similar way to how our moon deforms Earth by causing ocean tides. This suggests that Titan has a tidal ocean beneath its icy crust, with the liquid’s viscosity consistent with water (Science, DOI&colon; 10.1126/science.1219631). “The conclusion that there is a liquid layer underneath the outer icy shell is almost inescapable,” says Iess.

Dominic Fortes, a planetary scientist at University College London, is impressed. “This is likely to represent a habitat that is at least as large, if not larger, by volume than all the Earth’s oceans,” he says. He thinks the ocean might contain organic molecules necessary for life, as might the lakes of liquid methane and ethane on Titan, which are likely to be fed by hydrocarbon wells.

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